Is Britain Broken?
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Page 8

Smuggo wrote:
I really don't get how people can spend £100 on booze in a weekend. I find 6 pints is pretty much my limit, but then I try not to go to pubs on the weekend as they're full of the kind of cunts who may well spend £100 getting pissed up.

Well you could spend £100 in a top London club which charges £20 for two bottles of beer but yeah £100 in drink is a fuckload in most places, 40 single and mixers in fact and thats on Saturday which is usually more expensive!

SlackMaster wrote:
We seriously can't be living with another labour government for another term. Schools are broken, the benefits system is broken and there is too much anti-social behaviour. Personally when I retire, I don't want to be living in this country.

Because everything which existed during the Tory years was ripped out and torn up when Labour came into power, and everything since then has nothing whatsoever to do with policy which already existed.

/Picard

This seriously is a very pro labour board this one... people can have a difference of opinion you know.

Don't read the daily mail either. But you know Labour has been in power for over a decade and the NHS is still struggling etc etc... more than enough time to turn things around IMO.

SlackMaster wrote:
We seriously can't be living with another labour government for another term. Schools are broken, the benefits system is broken and there is too much anti-social behaviour. Personally when I retire, I don't want to be living in this country.

Because everything which existed during the Tory years was ripped out and torn up when Labour came into power, and everything since then has nothing whatsoever to do with policy which already existed.

/Picard

This seriously is a very pro labour board this one... people can have a difference of opinion you know.

Don't read the daily mail either. But you know Labour has been in power for over a decade and the NHS is still struggling etc etc... more than enough time to turn things around IMO.

You've either forgotten how bad the NHS was under the Tories or are too young to remember. Crime rates were much higher too.

I'm all for change but anyone thinking Cameron will be some kind of dynamic force will be severely disappointed. He's Blair MK 2 in a blue tie.

Labour doubled the NHS budget without any actual plan for how they would spend the money. Needless to say it didn't result in the NHS being twice as good.

Oh aye, they both fucked up massively. Just in different ways

Labour's spending has in particular been a bit of a disaster. There was actually a plan behind it all at one point when they commissioned the Wanless report, which had some proposals to reform the NHS and advised increased spending to achieve it. Labour kept to the spending bit and ignored the proposals bit. Wanless popped up a few years later (backed by the Kings Fund this time) and totally disowned the reforms what the govt did following his report, iirc.

When you include the money they've pissed up the wall on IT reforms which achieved fuck, it's shocking.

But....under tories the wheels really were falling off. It was a national embarrassment, tbh. The comparison's of nations differing health care services commission by WHO in 2000(ish) was a disgrace, putting use behind pretty much every other developed country. This report often gets brought up as NHSlol fodder by right wing private health care enthusiasts.

In terms of waiting times, clinical governance, cancer treatment, efficiency and evidence based treatment, we're a lot better off now than we were late 80s/mid 90s imho. Even if it does feel just as crap. But that's health care - it will always be crap because there is a bottomless demand.

Smuggo wrote:
I've often thought scaling back the NHS and deliberately fucking it up might actually solve a lot of problems.

One of the biggest problems we face as a nation is our ageing population. The reason it's ageing is people are living longer than they ever have before. As a result, pensions and elderly care have become massively unaffordable.

If the NHS were actually less efficient, and people stopped living so long, we might actually be better off.

Of course it's controversial and politically unpalatable, but it is a solution to a problem.

Labour doubled the NHS budget without any actual plan for how they would spend the money. Needless to say it didn't result in the NHS being twice as good.

Oh aye, they both fucked up massively. Just in different ways

Labour's spending has in particular been a bit of a disaster. There was actually a plan behind it all at one point when they commissioned the Wanless report, which had some proposals to reform the NHS and advised increased spending to achieve it. Labour kept to the spending bit and ignored the proposals bit. Wanless popped up a few years later (backed by the Kings Fund this time) and totally disowned the reforms what the govt did following his report, iirc.

When you include the money they've pissed up the wall on IT reforms which achieved fuck, it's shocking.

But....under tories the wheels really were falling off. It was a national embarrassment, tbh. The comparison's of nations differing health care services commission by WHO in 2000(ish) was a disgrace, putting use behind pretty much every other developed country. This report often gets brought up as NHSlol fodder by right wing private health care enthusiasts.

In terms of waiting times, clinical governance, cancer treatment, efficiency and evidence based treatment, we're a lot better off now than we were late 80s/mid 90s imho. Even if it does feel just as crap. But that's health care - it will always be crap because there is a bottomless demand.

tl;dr

I've often thought scaling back the NHS and deliberately fucking it up might actually solve a lot of problems.

One of the biggest problems we face as a nation is our ageing population. The reason it's ageing is people are living longer than they ever have before. As a result, pensions and elderly care have become massively unaffordable.

If the NHS were actually less efficient, and people stopped living so long, we might actually be better off.

Of course it's controversial and politically unpalatable, but it is a solution to a problem.

Or we could bite the bullet and properly fund pensions. It's not like the money just disappears, the oldies will spend it on food and clothes and heating, with a bit left over for tartan slippers and worthers originals. It'll go back into the economy again, in other words - unless they buy lots of stuff from abroad, but luckily a high proportion of pensioners are reassuringly racist.

It really is depressing how unlikeable both main parties are, isn't it?

Neither will come out with actual policies, and night after night after night they are on telly giving non-answers and evading simple questions.

Really, they are both as bad as each other. But having grown up through Thatcherism, I will never, ever vote Tory. The only reason they have a chance of winning this election is that there are too many people who either didn't experience it, or who have forgotten what it was like and just want to vote for a party that'll make house prices rise again.